Different Student-Centered Activities for Home Economics
The teaching of home economics is a subject rife with hands-on learning, both in live classrooms and virtual. The teaching of home economics involves students developing a sense of financial literacy, healthy dieting and cooking, family interaction, and appropriate dress -- all of which students can learn in lively, hands-on learning environments.
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Financial Literacy
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With home economics, comes the ability to manage home budgets. While students might get some of this in a mathematics curriculum, it has significance in the teaching of home economics. Learning how to balance checkbooks and budget money is a good first step. Opening up a school store or establishing a classroom store, either live or online, is a good way to practice pricing, managing money, budgeting, making financial decisions, saving and investing profits while making smart purchases to keep the business running. Purchasing inventories, developing prices, marketing and opening a store for business are all student-centered learning opportunities in a curriculum of financial literacy.
Healthy Dieting and Cooking
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Cooking and following recipes are smart hands-on ways to teach students all kinds of skills, including following directions, teamwork, managing time and measuring ingredients. Before following a recipe, students can research healthy foods, learn about the proportions that constitute healthy diets for growing young adults and children. After researching several healthy recipes, they choose a few to pursue in a shared environment by delegating responsibilities and working as a team. Once the delicious recipes have been made, students can share their results in a potluck meal.
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Family Interdependency
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As students learn to cooperate in a classroom environment, they're building skills that will transfer to the home environment. Knowing and understanding how to transfer healthy interaction in the home is important. Learning to get along with each other by working in cooperative activities will reinforce these important skills. Assigning homework activities to be completed in a similar cooperative environment in the home will help students transfer healthy behaviors. Assigning students to teach some of these newly acquired cooperative skills is another effective way to transfer healthy social behaviors into the home. Holding follow-up classroom discussion and allowing them opportunities to reflect on these experiences by speaking and writing about them will seal important learning.
Decisions About Dress and Fashion
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Sometimes students need coaching in dressing appropriately for school. Teaching them how to make independent and appropriate decisions about dress has may considerations: weather, season, school policy and personal preferences that tie into individual identities. Through the use of examples taken from multi-media, high-profile television stars, and some of their favorite singers and actors, students can critique, discuss, and even recreate appropriate dress. Students can practice hypothetically using clothing examples from catalogs or online avatars where they dress characters for different seasons and occasions.
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References
- Photo Credit note on the refrigerator iv image by Mykola Velychko from Fotolia.com
